


Nothing So Alien

by Merfilly



Category: DCU - Comicverse
Genre: Love Triangles, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-01-20
Updated: 2007-01-20
Packaged: 2017-12-05 19:02:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/726830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merfilly/pseuds/Merfilly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>20 years after Bruce's death, J'onn honors his last request.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nothing So Alien

He knew what day it was, knew without the shadow of a doubt that the person within would not be accepting visitors willingly. The imposing edifice of crystalline spires failed to daunt the traveler, no mater how long it had been since they had last parted.

Today was the twentieth anniversary of Bruce Wayne's death. J'onn would rather have gone to lick at the pain flickering in his psyche like H'ronmeer's kiss anywhere else.

Bruce had asked them to come together on this day though. As J'onn could not bear to let Clark's mental disharmony come into his haven, he had made the journey. The fact he was entirely unsure if Clark would have come was secondary.

Bracing his mental walls against the painful history they shared, one they had only learned on Bruce's passing, the Martian went inside the Fortress of Solitude, a most aptly named place, now that Clark had finished withdrawing from humanity.

"Still letting a dead man decide your path for you?" The bitterness in the words hammered at J'onn's will to be here, made him seek the strength of those memories, the ones Clark so resented.

"We both respected him in life; to fail to honor his lingering request dishonors that, Clark."

"Kal." The growled word was in full Kryptonian accent, the intonation brutal to J'onn after so long separated from the man.

"I brought the disk, Kal. We will watch it, and then you and I may return to our separate lives." J'onn watched as the man clad in the black and white descended from on high, struck on more time by how wrong it was to see the loss of humanity evidenced in the pattern of Kryptonian garb.

"I do not wish to." The edge of sulkiness could no more be denied than the flare of anger in J'onn's.

"If you had not been so blind!" the Martian began, before stopping himself with a growl.

"You used him," Kal accused, and they were set to the pattern. J'onn would attack Kal's lack of sight for what Bruce had displayed; Kal would retaliate with the fact J'onn had taken advantage of Bruce's lonely path.

It dishonored Bruce, and that was enough for J'onn to pull himself in check. He held up the disk in silence.

"He wanted us to watch this, twenty years after his death. That day is today. Now, let us end his last mystery for us, and be done with it!" J'onn met and held the eyes that glared balefully at him, unimpressed by the hard blue shifting briefly red, then back again. Silently Kal turned…mid air, J'onn noted, keeping their heights even, and led the way to his computers.

J'onn handed the disk over when it was demanded, then drew his cape around him and closing it as the only physical sign he did not want to truly deal with Kal right now. He focused on the viewscreen, keeping the hovering Kal in his peripheral vision even as he shied from the wall of mental static there.

"Hello," Bruce said from the screen, as fit as the man in J'onn's memories, not that bloody broken thing Kal had carried away from the fight with Darkseid. "Neither of you have put your pride aside and worked through my death, I am sure." Bruce shook his head. "And they complained that I was the reticent one." The man on the screen leaned forward, across the desk that had been in his study, eyes compelling J'onn to focus on the eerie image of life forever stolen from him. "J'onn, we never had dishonesty, we never lied to one another. The emotions were always real, potent, and left unsaid. But now, in front of the one who brought us together, I say it. I loved you. You gave me sanity when mine fell away." He then focused his attention to the left, uncannily knowing just where Kal would be. "Clark…no, I don't care what name you've slapped over the veneer of your pain. You are my Clark, always were…and I was too blind to see you were there."

J'onn noted his former friend slowly come to the floor, honestly listening. The look on his face was very close to one of…open grief at long last.

"You came to me three weeks ago, and we had an affair, an affair I told you I would not continue," Bruce was saying. "You were married to Lois. I had chosen the comfort J'onn brought me."

That last drew a growl from the Kryptonian.

"As much as you and I might have been suited to one another, Clark, we each waited too long." Bruce turned back to where J'onn was. "J'onn, I told you about the affair, and you told me you understood. At the time, I suspected differently. That you worried I was staying out of pity. And yes, we began in less than love, when you learned my secret…but that was not why I accepted your bond."

"You bonded him?!" Now Kal's voice was very angry as he looked with jealous eyes at J'onn.

"Listen." J'onn suspected he knew where his long dead lover was going with this.

"…Clark. Let him. J'onn…I know what I am asking of you, and if you say no…I would understand."

"What?" Kal refocused, reaching to back it up.

"He asked me to share the core of who he and I were with you." J'onn was slightly shaken at the request. Even Kal looked shocked as Bruce's voice slowly faded out with a wish that both heal and move on.

"How could he expect you to do such a thing?" The fairness that had once been his trademark came to the forefront. J'onn turned away, walking the other direction to think. "I don't. Much as I have felt…abused by the fact you two were…together, when he told me he loved me…"

"That is just it, Kal." J'onn turned back. "What drew us together was you!" 

The stunning admission, wrung from J'onn because he knew he could not deny Bruce's request, knew Kal would feel it as soon as the thoughts merged, left Kal shaking impotently.

"I…don't understand."

"No…you never did, and that is why he stayed with me, rather than give himself to you, once we both knew you returned his unspoken feelings." J'onn stood tall, proud, refusing to be humiliated. Bruce's love had been requited; J'onn could not even have the friendship they had once shared.

"You…for me?"

"A foolish wish to find kinship, companionship of equals…" J'onn's face hardened. "What he has asked, I will give to you…but then we part, and I will not return."

Kal, seeing that, hearing that, found his arrogance once more, the solid shield of his long simmering, jealous anger and approached J'onn.

"So be it."

J'onn slowly, deliberately, lowered his shields, pulling Kal's psyche into himself, down deep into the core where {Bruce/J'onn} existed, hidden from the outside, from the life J'onn continued wearily. And, still shaken from Bruce's request, he laid everything open, from their shared respect and love for one another to their love of Superman/Clark/Kal-El to the simpler memories of lazy afternoons stolen between crime waves. He was swept along in the tide of his memories, in the pulse of that place within where Bruce would never die. That was maybe why he failed to realize it when Kal shattered, releasing Clark, who then pulled J'onn close. The Kryptonian delved further, pushing into that core, finding just how blind he had been, and being stripped of his jealousies, his angers as he felt the driving bond of once dear friends.

They only slowly managed to pull their collective consciousnesses apart, with J'onn all too aware that he had lost his hybrid form in favor of his natural one…and Clark did not seem to mind the close contact they still shared.

"Neither of you would tell me…"

"You had Lois." J'onn respected the sanctity of matrimony, as Bruce had tried to.

"I was so blind."

"It is over, in the past," J'onn informed him, shaping back to the hybrid form, trying to pull back. Clark stopped him, one hand coming to his face.

"But it's not, is it, J'onn? All these years…you've been harboring the love both of you felt…and I was still too blind to see."

"You had reason…"

"Wrong ones," Clark interrupted. "Why did Bruce want you to share this?"

J'onn looked into the blue eyes so close in color to the ones he saw in his most haunted and most precious meditations. He started to answer, but Clark covered his lips with a finger.

"To bring us together?" With that thought voiced, Clark acted, replacing his finger with his own lips, a wordless offering of a beginning, a companionship founded on love of a dead man…and hope for more.

It was not perfect, but it was enough for the last Martian to try again for.


End file.
